Military AI Works

Washington Post
September 13, 2008
Pg. 8

Unified Nuclear Command Urged

By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates yesterday called on the Air Force to establish clear and unified control over the nation's nuclear arsenal, after a new report by a Pentagon task force concluded that the service had neglected its stewardship of such weapons for more than a decade.

"Today no senior leader in the Air Force 'owns' the nuclear mission," concluded the eight-member task force, appointed by Gates and chaired by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger. "The current organization is not properly structured."

The task force recommended yesterday that the Air Force designate a new Air Force Strategic Command, which would replace the current Air Force Space Command, and make it accountable for the nuclear mission. It also called for all Air Force bombers to be placed under a single command.

Gates, speaking at a Pentagon news conference where Schlesinger outlined the report, stressed that unity of command over nuclear weapons and materials is vital, adding that "the task force . . . makes a strong case in this respect for a new command." He said no decision had been made on the command proposal.

The push to centralize Air Force management of the nuclear force weapons follows two serious mishaps involving U.S. nuclear weapons -- an August 2007 incident when the Air Force unknowingly flew nuclear warheads between North Dakota and Louisiana, and the mistaken shipment in 2006 of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan.

Subsequent investigations led Gates to fire the Air Force's two top civilian and military leaders in June. Gates also established the task force to examine nuclear weapons management in two reports -- the first focused on the Air Force and the second on the Defense Department.

Yesterday, Gates said he considers nuclear weapons management the military's "most sensitive mission" and one critical to maintaining the confidence of foreign allies in the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

Schlesinger said some of the roughly 30 nations that rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella -- including NATO allies as well as Australia and New Zealand -- have "expressed misgivings about whether or not they feel comfortable under the umbrella." That could lead them to acquire their own nuclear weapons, he said. The Air Force and Pentagon must "resuscitate their confidence in the credibility of the nuclear umbrella," he said.

The Schlesinger task force found that the Air Force, the main steward of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, has neglected that mission, starting with the dissolution in 1991 of the Strategic Air Command.

"There has been an unambiguous, dramatic, and unacceptable decline in the Air Force's commitment to perform the nuclear mission and, until very recently, little has been done to reverse it," the report said. Nuclear deterrence is no longer taught at the War College, it noted.

"There is a shortage of security personnel," Schlesinger said. "There is a shortage of maintenance people. There is a shortage of those who supervise the nuclear establishment."

To fill the voids in the short term, the Air Force should move 1,500 to 2,000 airmen into nuclear-related jobs, and it is budgeting roughly $1.5 billion for 2010 to shore up the mission, Schlesinger said.

But the report concluded that although the Air Force is currently tracking "more than 180 corrective actions" to fix immediate problems, "it will take a concerted and sustained commitment by the Air Force leadership at all levels to restore the culture and ethos of nuclear excellence."

Asked if other top Air Force officers would face reprimands, Gates said acting Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz are "reviewing the recommendations" for disciplinary action.

From AF Daily Report 15 Sep 08

Schlesinger Panel Advocates Nuclear Command: On the eve of the Air Force nuclear summit, the special gray-beard task force chaired by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger has recommended that the service morphs Air Force Space Command into a new authority that brings nuclear-capable bomber units and ICBM wings under one roof. Doing so, the panel said in a report issued Friday (caution: large file), would serve to restore the Air Force's attention to the nuclear mission and its readiness to execute it. More specifically, Schlesinger told reporters Friday during a Pentagon briefing, AFSPC, which already oversees the nation's three Minuteman III missile wings, should subsume a new numbered air force that contains all nuclear-capable bombers (i.e., B-2As and B-52Hs) and re-emerge as Air Force Strategic Command, aligning its missions with those of US Strategic Command. Without these organizational changes, the service "would fail to address some of the main root causes of the nuclear mission's decline in priority," said the task force, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates chartered in June to examine the Air Force's tarnished nuclear enterprise and suggest changes. Gates, who spoke before Schlesinger at the press briefing, said the proposal would address one of his principal concerns with the Air Force's stewardship of nuclear weapons: the lack of unity of command. "Now I am not sure what the right answer is" to resolve that issue, he said. Whether the answer ends up being a new kind of command—or a new command—is something Acting Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Gen. Norton Schwartz, Chief of Staff, "will have to address," Gates said. Donley and Schwartz will lead Thursday's nuclear summit at which the Air Force leadership will decide upon the service's implementation plan for reinvigorating the nuclear enterprise. (See No Perfect Solution for more on task force report

Shreveport (LA) Times
September 15, 2008

New Report Would Revive 8th Air Force's Functions

By John Andrew Prime

The report from the blue-ribbon task force chaired by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and delivered last week to current Defense Secretary Robert Gates would pump new life into an old friend at Barksdale Air Force Base: the 8th Air Force.

Three of the report's 11 recommendations would directly jab the numbered air force with the organizational equivalents of growth hormones. These are that the 8th Air Force should control all Air Force bombers by September 2009, that it should lose all side missions except for the bomber role, again no later than one year from now, and that it should shift from control by Air Combat Command to a newly created Air Force Strategic Command, or AFSTRAT, molded from the clay of what is now Air Force Space Command.

AFSTRAT, if one looks close, would bear a remarkable resemblance to the Strategic Air Command molded by the likes of Generals Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, that was shut down in the early 1990s, shortly after the supposed demise of its presumed reason for being, the former Soviet Union.

Recent developments, from Air Force mishandling of nuclear weapons and components, to the posturing of a resurgent Russia against Western-leaning Estonia and Georgia, have focused administration eyes on the need to recreate a leaner, meaner and more disciplined nuclear force. Hence the Schlesinger Task Force and its report.

The first major questions that might come to mind with the local reader concerned with 8th Air Force should be "Will this force a move from Barksdale to somewhere else?" and "How will this play with current plans, now paused under review, to create a Cyber Command that now uses cyber capabilities of the 8th Air Force?"

Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr., the current 8th Air Force commander at Barksdale, doesn't believe the former will happen.

"The Air Force took aggressive actions to implement the recommendations in the Defense Science Board report released in February and the Donald Report released in May," he said. " As a result, many of the recommendations in the Schlesinger report are already being implemented."

The proposal has a thumbs-up from a former Cold War warrior, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Peyton Cole, a past 2nd Bomb Wing commander, of Bossier City.

"Frankly, anything that would put more emphasis and oversight on the nuclear mission would be welcomed," Cole said. "Jim Schlesinger is pretty long on the tooth but he's still pretty viable and coherent. We've gotten away from the old SAC doctrines and protocols that governed dealing with nuclear weapons, and we certainly need to 'return to the future' by re-implementing those old ways."

As a bit of history, 8th Air Force, which became famous in World War II as the U.S. equivalent of the British Bomber Command, came to Barksdale in 1975 from war duty in Southeast Asia.

It was deployed overseas and was headquartered at Bushy Park, England effective 25 June 1942. It relocated to High Wycombe, in February 1944 with the reorganization of 8th Air Force and the establishment of United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe.

It was formed as the VIII Bomber Command at Langley Field, Va., in 1942, but almost immediately was reassigned to Savannah Army Airbase, Ga., with personnel quickly sent on to England, where 8th Air Force occupied such hallowed field as High Wycombe, Bushy Park, RAF Polebrook, RAF Grafton Underwood, RAF Molesworth, RAF Steeple Morden, RAF Duxford, RAF Greenham Common, RAF Boxted, Brampton Grange Huntingdonshire and Ketteringham Hall Norfolk.

After the end of hostilities in Europe in World War II, 8th Air Force briefly as moved to Okinawa. But the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the end of the war in the Pacific and it left Okinawa after less than a year.

Postwar, 8th Air Force became Strategic Air Command's second numbered air force and was reassigned, without personnel or equipment, to MacDill Army Airfield, Fla., and then to Fort Worth Army Airfield, which was renamed Carswell Air Force Base after the creation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947. It remained in Texas until 1970, when it moved to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, to conduct offensive operations in Southeast Asia. It moved to Barksdale on Jan. 1, 1975, absorbing the personnel and facilities of the old 2nd Air Force.

During these transformations, 8th Air Force acquired greater expeditionary and intelligence functions and gradually lost most of its bomber focus, including the atomic mission it alone had performed until the advent of missiles, which went to a separate command within the Air Force and also created a nuclear warfighting mission for the Navy. Until the recommendations of the Schlesinger report are implemented, 8th Air Force's bomber warfighting mission exists solely through the operation of what is called "Task Force 204."

The Schlesinger report's public version — the order by Gates to create it specifically allowed for a classified version not for public release — contains an interesting appendix which details some of the pressures put on the B-52 fleet by the service's gradual shift away from nuclear concerns and greater emphasis on expeditionary forays to Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations with "-stan" at the end of their names.

Among these are:

*ACC's most senior officer dedicated to nuclear issues is a colonel.

*Funds to address B-52 electrical systems "have been No. 1 below the cut line on ACC's unfunded priority list over the past eight years."

*B-52 "forces are suffering from severe shortages of experienced personnel in key nuclear mission areas.

*There are serious maintenance manpower shortages at B-52 wings, with one wing short 300 maintenance personnel and the other short 100, leading one wing to be unable to "generate all its aircraft due to maintenance crew shortages." One wing only has 66 percent of its assigned crew chiefs and is 130 personnel below its authorized manning level, largely due to personnel deploying overseas. The wings are not identified in the report, but the active Air Force only has two B-52 wings, one at Barksdale and one at Minot, so readers can draw their own conclusions whether these shortages hit home.

More ominously, the report said that this year both wings failed their nuclear surety inspections, or NSIs. That, Elder said, was not unexpected.

"Nuclear surety inspections have always been the Air Force's toughest evaluation — there is simply no room for error. The unsatisfactory ratings, despite strong performances by both wings, reflect the impeccably high standards we place on this critical mission. Regarding the Barksdale NSI, 2nd Bomb Wing had one unsatisfactory element that was corrected on the spot, which is why the inspection was correctly reported as satisfactory last April."He said all three of the bomber wings that have a nuclear role, the wings at Barksdale and at Minot and the 509th Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., "are ready today to perform to the highest standards expected on these inspections, to include the no-notice inspection program which ACC implemented as a result of the DSB report."The bomber force also is at an inventory that may possibly be a historic low since the end of World War I. According to the Schlesinger report, there are 27 B-52s at the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot, only a dozen "combat coded," or reader for immediate use; 64 at Barksdale's 2nd Bomb Wing, 24 combat coded and 15 segregated for task force use; two in test configuration for the 53rd Wing at Barksdale; and eight combat-coded at the Air Force Reserve's 917th Wing at Barksdale. There also are three of the bombers at Edwards Air Force Base in California, two used for tests and one used as a heavy lift carrier by NASA.

The report also shows there are 97 B-52G models at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., that might be restored to flying status, and two similarly usable at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

As for 8th Air Force's role in the future cyber mission, while Elder has been a major intellectual voice and theorist in the field, the latest flow charts showing the lines of command and control call for the creation of a new 24th Air Force."I still believe there will be a 24th Air Force, but perhaps along the lines we initially envisioned as a Guard numbered air force for cyber defense mirroring 1st Air Force at Tyndall Air Force Base," Elder said in August when the first reports of Cyber Command being under review surfaced. "The Air Force commitment to cyber is unchanged. As I see it, the Air Force recognizes that cyber is a mission for the entire Air Force, not just something done by a part of the Air Force in a dedicated command."

Shreveport (LA) Times
September 15, 2008

New Report Would Revive 8th Air Force's Functions

By John Andrew Prime

The report from the blue-ribbon task force chaired by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and delivered last week to current Defense Secretary Robert Gates would pump new life into an old friend at Barksdale Air Force Base: the 8th Air Force.

Three of the report's 11 recommendations would directly jab the numbered air force with the organizational equivalents of growth hormones. These are that the 8th Air Force should control all Air Force bombers by September 2009, that it should lose all side missions except for the bomber role, again no later than one year from now, and that it should shift from control by Air Combat Command to a newly created Air Force Strategic Command, or AFSTRAT, molded from the clay of what is now Air Force Space Command.

AFSTRAT, if one looks close, would bear a remarkable resemblance to the Strategic Air Command molded by the likes of Generals Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, that was shut down in the early 1990s, shortly after the supposed demise of its presumed reason for being, the former Soviet Union.

Recent developments, from Air Force mishandling of nuclear weapons and components, to the posturing of a resurgent Russia against Western-leaning Estonia and Georgia, have focused administration eyes on the need to recreate a leaner, meaner and more disciplined nuclear force. Hence the Schlesinger Task Force and its report.

The first major questions that might come to mind with the local reader concerned with 8th Air Force should be "Will this force a move from Barksdale to somewhere else?" and "How will this play with current plans, now paused under review, to create a Cyber Command that now uses cyber capabilities of the 8th Air Force?"

Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr., the current 8th Air Force commander at Barksdale, doesn't believe the former will happen.

"The Air Force took aggressive actions to implement the recommendations in the Defense Science Board report released in February and the Donald Report released in May," he said. " As a result, many of the recommendations in the Schlesinger report are already being implemented."

The proposal has a thumbs-up from a former Cold War warrior, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Peyton Cole, a past 2nd Bomb Wing commander, of Bossier City.

"Frankly, anything that would put more emphasis and oversight on the nuclear mission would be welcomed," Cole said. "Jim Schlesinger is pretty long on the tooth but he's still pretty viable and coherent. We've gotten away from the old SAC doctrines and protocols that governed dealing with nuclear weapons, and we certainly need to 'return to the future' by re-implementing those old ways."

As a bit of history, 8th Air Force, which became famous in World War II as the U.S. equivalent of the British Bomber Command, came to Barksdale in 1975 from war duty in Southeast Asia.

It was deployed overseas and was headquartered at Bushy Park, England effective 25 June 1942. It relocated to High Wycombe, in February 1944 with the reorganization of 8th Air Force and the establishment of United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe.

It was formed as the VIII Bomber Command at Langley Field, Va., in 1942, but almost immediately was reassigned to Savannah Army Airbase, Ga., with personnel quickly sent on to England, where 8th Air Force occupied such hallowed field as High Wycombe, Bushy Park, RAF Polebrook, RAF Grafton Underwood, RAF Molesworth, RAF Steeple Morden, RAF Duxford, RAF Greenham Common, RAF Boxted, Brampton Grange Huntingdonshire and Ketteringham Hall Norfolk.

After the end of hostilities in Europe in World War II, 8th Air Force briefly as moved to Okinawa. But the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the end of the war in the Pacific and it left Okinawa after less than a year.

Postwar, 8th Air Force became Strategic Air Command's second numbered air force and was reassigned, without personnel or equipment, to MacDill Army Airfield, Fla., and then to Fort Worth Army Airfield, which was renamed Carswell Air Force Base after the creation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947. It remained in Texas until 1970, when it moved to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, to conduct offensive operations in Southeast Asia. It moved to Barksdale on Jan. 1, 1975, absorbing the personnel and facilities of the old 2nd Air Force.

During these transformations, 8th Air Force acquired greater expeditionary and intelligence functions and gradually lost most of its bomber focus, including the atomic mission it alone had performed until the advent of missiles, which went to a separate command within the Air Force and also created a nuclear warfighting mission for the Navy. Until the recommendations of the Schlesinger report are implemented, 8th Air Force's bomber warfighting mission exists solely through the operation of what is called "Task Force 204."

The Schlesinger report's public version — the order by Gates to create it specifically allowed for a classified version not for public release — contains an interesting appendix which details some of the pressures put on the B-52 fleet by the service's gradual shift away from nuclear concerns and greater emphasis on expeditionary forays to Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations with "-stan" at the end of their names.

Among these are:

*ACC's most senior officer dedicated to nuclear issues is a colonel.

*Funds to address B-52 electrical systems "have been No. 1 below the cut line on ACC's unfunded priority list over the past eight years."

*B-52 "forces are suffering from severe shortages of experienced personnel in key nuclear mission areas.

*There are serious maintenance manpower shortages at B-52 wings, with one wing short 300 maintenance personnel and the other short 100, leading one wing to be unable to "generate all its aircraft due to maintenance crew shortages." One wing only has 66 percent of its assigned crew chiefs and is 130 personnel below its authorized manning level, largely due to personnel deploying overseas. The wings are not identified in the report, but the active Air Force only has two B-52 wings, one at Barksdale and one at Minot, so readers can draw their own conclusions whether these shortages hit home.

More ominously, the report said that this year both wings failed their nuclear surety inspections, or NSIs. That, Elder said, was not unexpected.

"Nuclear surety inspections have always been the Air Force's toughest evaluation — there is simply no room for error. The unsatisfactory ratings, despite strong performances by both wings, reflect the impeccably high standards we place on this critical mission. Regarding the Barksdale NSI, 2nd Bomb Wing had one unsatisfactory element that was corrected on the spot, which is why the inspection was correctly reported as satisfactory last April."He said all three of the bomber wings that have a nuclear role, the wings at Barksdale and at Minot and the 509th Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., "are ready today to perform to the highest standards expected on these inspections, to include the no-notice inspection program which ACC implemented as a result of the DSB report."The bomber force also is at an inventory that may possibly be a historic low since the end of World War I. According to the Schlesinger report, there are 27 B-52s at the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot, only a dozen "combat coded," or reader for immediate use; 64 at Barksdale's 2nd Bomb Wing, 24 combat coded and 15 segregated for task force use; two in test configuration for the 53rd Wing at Barksdale; and eight combat-coded at the Air Force Reserve's 917th Wing at Barksdale. There also are three of the bombers at Edwards Air Force Base in California, two used for tests and one used as a heavy lift carrier by NASA.

The report also shows there are 97 B-52G models at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., that might be restored to flying status, and two similarly usable at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

As for 8th Air Force's role in the future cyber mission, while Elder has been a major intellectual voice and theorist in the field, the latest flow charts showing the lines of command and control call for the creation of a new 24th Air Force."I still believe there will be a 24th Air Force, but perhaps along the lines we initially envisioned as a Guard numbered air force for cyber defense mirroring 1st Air Force at Tyndall Air Force Base," Elder said in August when the first reports of Cyber Command being under review surfaced. "The Air Force commitment to cyber is unchanged. As I see it, the Air Force recognizes that cyber is a mission for the entire Air Force, not just something done by a part of the Air Force in a dedicated command."

From AF Daily Report 1 OCT 08

Corona Kicks Off Today: The Air Force's leadership, along with the service's senior commanders, gathered today at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for three days of discussion and decision-making. These tri-annual Corona summits are designed to cover the breadth of issues facing the service. That said, one of the main topics driving the agenda at this meeting will be the Air Force's nuclear enterprise and the organizational changes deemed necessary to restore confidence in the service's nuclear stewardship and reinvigorate the nuclear career path and mission. Going into the meeting, the service has developed a nuclear roadmap. At Corona, service officials have indicated that the leadership will decide upon the implementation plan for the changes articulated in the roadmap. One option under consideration is the creation of a new major command akin to the Strategic Air Command of Cold War days that would oversee the service's ICBM force and its B-2A and B-52H nuclear-capable bombers. The task force headed by James Schlesinger, former CIA, DOD, and DOE czar, recommended last month that the Air Force move all of its bombers—including the conventional-only B-1Bs—under Air Force Space Command, which already overseas the nation's Minuteman III ICBMs. AFSPC should then be redesignated Air Force Strategic Command and aligned with the missions of US Strategic Command, Schlesinger said.